DAVIDSTOWN 2

Holy God! What an evening! It started like the Vietnam war was fought; I dropped down on Davidstown out of nowhere, bike and kit in hand and was in a warzone within 20 minutes of landing. The warm-up wasn't one really, just a healthy shock to find a cancer survivor shaking my hand and pedalling along beside me in the day's afterglow. I had such a smile on my face at the start I'm sure people thought I was juiced. So the search for the enemy began within a klick of the start, out of nowhere... probing attacks and random defiance began. Not everyone it seems, read the manual. Just like in-country in the Delta back around '68, skirmishes happened and unhappened like Casper the unfriendly ghost materialising out of thin air, albeit a heavily armed version. I held fire. No use in bursting off all your ammo in a firefight only to find yourself isolated and empty-handed. Davidstown is an organic process. Getting used to the pace of that cross-country slog takes patience and understanding. Finally, confronted by the enemy becoming more daring on the 4th lap it was time to lock and load. I had enough ammo for three rapid bursts. One was used to up the pace, push the envelope, fill the legs and head with fast flowing blood. The second was a counter-attack to put a number of rivals in their place. The third, and longest, death-defying burst, was up the outside and into the last turn smoothly, switching the firing pattern to auto as the runway-length finishing straight hove into view. It was so far to that LZ that I changed gear twice, changed position once, to keep the sub-kilo front wheel on terra firma. Fifth to the line. Into the chopper for extraction. Gone.############################################################################################################################### DE-BRIEF; Shane Doyle shouted something along the lines of 'Lets go Lads!' And that my friends, was akin to shouting 'mad minute!'. The bunch swarmed, the frontal vacuum of the race sucked the successful to the last bend and all hell broke loose. Five from the same tight platoon in the top six. Victory. Not to mention the comebacks and hijacks and fresh meat and good friends and bantering and grovelling and the odd pilot-fish. And was that James Maddock at the back, making a return to the fray after his free but unhappy ride in a medevac chopper last month? I tell you, there are amazing soldiers out on Wednesday nights; those that have massive battles just to get to the start, or personal fitness fights, or mental battles that can be insurmountable to others. But all the time theres just those good people, good, good people that make a snapshot, one-hour event, an extravagant experience.

Old Timer

I remember a time when carbon was used to copy pages. When hubs ran on big,fat ball-bearings that needed to be greased religiously after rainy training. I remember saddles that had more leather than a tannery and lasted a lifetime. I remember handlebar stems and headsets that needed a horse-whisperer's knack to adjust correctly. I remember steel. Pounds of it. I remember 12 speed. Toe clips and leather straps that you could open as fast as anyone can clip-out now. Leather helmets that wouldn't save your life unless you fell on a mattress. Cotton or wool jerseys that sagged like a trawler's net full of cod. I remember large old socks and plastic bags underneath as overshoes. I remember shorts that were a pain in the ass. And crosso rosso spray jobs. And stainless dropouts. And clothesline brake cables. Tyre rubber wasn't wonderful, chains were thick, derailleurs were slow. So much has changed yet...not really. If you are under thirty then the above list is an alien world to you. But so much hasn't changed at all. The fastest I've ever gone on a bike was 104 km/h on the strip between the cattle grids on Mt Leinster. Twenty odd years ago. With eff all brakes, no lid, and a northerly wind. I haven't got near it since. The happiest I've ever been on a bike was in the Blackstairs 200k, away on my own for the last 20 miles, on a borrowed navy Mercian, courtesy of Adrian, out of food and drink and slowly getting sun-burned. I sat on the doorstep of the clubhouse in the Irishtown and was high as a kite on endorphins. A long time ago. No carbon or Garmin in sight. But last night I was in a training race with my clubmates and even though I'm getting old and wrinkly, I got that smile back, chasing hard and getting the the crazed race-face thing going on again. I've lost many years in the wilderness of youth but I'm still keen as mustard. I love remembering those heady days but I have no objection to carbon weaponry, the whir of deep sections, the extra speed of better training. And today I cycle in the second coming of cycling in Ireland. Whats not to like? Sometimes its good to get old.

Post Mortem

When your friend asks you, 5 kilometres into a race, if its still neutralised, you know you aren't going as fast as you should. When the flag dropped last Sunday and the lead car sped away, nothing changed. I actually thought I was in a sportif and the feed was coming up soon. Alas it took three quarters of a lap for the touch paper to be lit. Having said that, I wasn't going to be the one that lit it, was I? In the previous 10 days I'd slept little, travelled a lot, ate badly and not trained at all like I should have. So, just like the first race of the season, I was into the unknown and going to play it conservatively in case I didn't make it to the end. And Dungarvan is a tough race where anything can happen and when it does go, it fires off hard. Three kilometres of a tough climb to finish is only the half of it, theres also the sinuous back road that seems endless, and the long straight road before that, like a no-man's land where everyone feared to thread. Throw in Sunday's rain and wind and the consequent Belgian toothpaste and you have a tough day and a tougher day for a white Barrow Wheeler jersey! I'm gonna park the first of two laps because really we rode like...well..as if we were parked! Then it rained a little... the pace went up, we climbed like diminutive Spanish mountain goats and the pace stayed elevated and excited for the whole second lap. I hid in the top twenty, told myself to take it handy and stayed out of the wind. And despite a couple of crazed lunatic bike handlers, determined to frighten/ put on edge/ agitate and aggravate a whole bunch of cyclists, we arrived intact at the base of the final climb and someone switched on the fan, because the s##t hit it! Three kilometres in zero time. I sat comfortable in the top 10 all the way to the 300m mark. My lungs burned badly and I could not have cycled harder. And I never realised 300m could be so long. We were swamped at the finish and completely empty. After I stopped hyper-ventilating I began the post-mortem. Apt, considering my legs were dead. What could I have changed? I had stayed in the top thirty, out of the wind and out of trouble. Yet some of those that beat me had hidden even further back for the whole race. I don't know if I'm prepared to do that because its skittish at the back, my nerves would be shot. And the elastic stretches even further back there. If I want to feel like a bungee-jumper I'll head to New Zealand for a gap year. My handling was a lot better in the rain too, yet I didn't capitalise on it by attacking. Notoriously, A4 races tend to stay together. But thats only because people are happy to stay there and wait. But in my last two races, 50 of those that stayed hiding at the back were still at the back when the race was over. Now that IS headless! I'd rather race at the next level up for one hour and be dropped than coast and wear brake-blocks for two. But I'll have to change my tune...; I have to sleep, eat, train and focus with intent if I want to win my targets in May.